Films can be Friends

This James A. FitzPatrick Traveltalks short visits the West German cities of Hamburg, Bremen, Munich, and Heidelberg. Included are scenes of World War II destruction that lingered at the time.

This DVD contains a filmed rehearsal of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention at the legendary Beat Club in Bremen, Germany, on 6th October 1968. The music is largely one long improvisatory continuous performance rather than a run-through of their greatest hits, but is punctuated by Zappa directing the band to play the opening themes of some of his more well-known pieces.

Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer - arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary, maid, and co-designer). Enter Karin, a 23-year-old beauty who wants to be a model. Petra falls in love with Karin and invites her to move in.

The lives of six German-Turkish immigrants are drawn together by circumstance: An old man and a prostitute forging a partnership, a young scholar reconciling his past, two young women falling in love, and a mother putting the shattered pieces of her life back together.

Four farm animals, a donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster, leave their home to become musicians in Bremen. Based on the tale of the Brothers Grimm.

Frank Lehmann, 20, still lives with his parents in the dreary high-rise housing project "Neue Vahr" in Bremen. It's the year 1980 and Frank gets drafted to the army even though his friends assure him that "he's not really the guy for it". When he gets back home, after his first week at the army, his Dad has turned his room into a TV repair shop, so Frank has to move out. Luckily his old friend Martin is starting a commune with two other Punks in Bremens leftist borough "Viertel". Frank, without further ado rents the unlivable walk-through room. From now on Frank is a traveler between the Worlds. Each week he goes from the Army, with all the unconditional rules and regulations to the commune where his friends are preaching the world revolution. Frank is trying to avoid to stick out, but fails miserably, in both worlds.

Four aging animals, a dog, a cat, a donkey and a rooster escape from their former homes because they weren't as productive and useful for their owners as they used to be. To avoid death, they all move out on a musical journey to Bremen to find a better life.

An old donkey resolves to break away from the unbearable hardships of working for a fat miller. By and by, he recruits three more unsatisfied animals and convinces them to accompany him on his way to Bremen where they want to become musicians.